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Two headlines greeted me this morning that made me laugh, both related to the against piracy in Sweden.

Pirate Bay lawyer calls for retrial after judge confirms ties to copyright groups via CBC

Peter Althin, who represented Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde in the case, said Thursday he would request a retrial after Judge Tomas Norstrom confirmed Swedish Radio reports that he was a member of two copyright-protection organizations.

Norstrom acknowledged to Swedish Radio that he was a member of the Swedish Association for Copyright and sat on the board of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property.

However, he rejected the notion that there was any conflict of interest.

“I don’t think there are any circumstances that have made me biased in this case,” Judge Norstom said.

While in related news, for the past few weeks there has been widespread coverage of the drop of internet traffic/illegal downloading following the passage of anti-piracy law IPRED in Sweden.

The reports sited a company in Sweden called Netnod that supposedly provided the stats widely shared by anti-priacy groups such as Antipiratbyran. Problem there is that Netnod is now denying they ever made such comments, or COULD even provide such stats regardless:

“We do not have any data on ‘web traffic in Sweden’ and have not made any such statements,” Netnod executive Nurani Nimpuno told Digital Music News on Wednesday.

Instead, Netnod operates six internet exchange points (IXPs) in five
cities in Sweden. An IXP is a physical hub that allows various ISPs to exchange traffic easily between their networks. In the case of Netnod, a large number of non-Swedish ISPs participate, throwing the entire analysis into disarray. “There is no way of knowing [what percentage of] Swedish internet traffic is present at the Netnod IX,” Nimpuno continued.

via Digital Music News: Netnod Responds: No Data on ‘Web Traffic in Sweden’…

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